


rifle, scissor, stone

by Verbyna



Series: rifle, scissor, stone [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Gore, Gun Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Off-screen torture, Stalking, Violence, revenge is a dish best served piecemeal over the course of several years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 18:56:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10600128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: “Again,” Jack says, and Bittle takes the shot. He recoils harder than the gun.“Now imagine that’s a person."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedusaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/gifts), [thistidalwave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/gifts).



> thistidalwave: this is nice it's like my own personal pain dispenser  
> jedusaur: lolol welcome to lee
> 
> title & theme song from [squalloscope.](https://seayou.bandcamp.com/track/rifle-scissor-stone) if any of y'all want access to the story bible so u can play in the sandbox, drop me a message on tumblr @soundslikepenance

“Again,” Jack says, and Bittle takes the shot. He recoils harder than the gun.

“Now imagine that’s a person,” Jack says into the ringing silence. It’s very dark this far outside the city. They’re shooting bottles. It was Shitty’s idea, something about Bittle being southern, a story about his grandfather’s rifle that Jack wasn’t really hearing. “If that was a person, where would you shoot them?”

“In the heart,” Bittle says, and Jack thinks _I bet you would,_ but he only asks Bittle to consider the head instead. “Shoot for something you can see, kid.”

“Don’t call me that,” says Bittle. He shoots again. He doesn’t flinch again until they’re done.

 

*

 

“You must be joking,” Jack says. “I am not training a rookie. It’s out of the question.”

“It’s not up for discussion,” Lardo says mildly.

“Since when?”

She doesn’t need to answer that; Kent’s name hangs in the air between them. When they found Jack after Kent was done with him last time, he had three broken fingers and could only remember what had happened over the past eighty hours in fragments. In nightmares, and in other kinds of dreams, and he knows Kent’s a ghost, but he still wants to kill him or kiss him. He’s not sure which. Both, and at the same time, probably.

“Since you need to be responsible for more than yourself in the field,” Johnson’s reasonable voice fills in over Jack’s headset. “You have no sense of self-preservation.”

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Lardo tells him, so he gestures at his in-ear and up at the camera in the corner. She waves at it, then turns back to him. “Your baby duckling should get here tomorrow morning. I’ll give him the tour and send him down to medical, then he’s all yours.”

“For how long?” Jack asks. He’s starting to suspect his dad is behind all this; resistance is futile.

“Until I say he’s ready for solo work. Better shape up, Zimmermann.”

Nurse starts singing the damn song from the next desk over, like that’s his cue. Jack makes a strategic retreat before Shitty joins in.

 

*

 

“Faster,” Jack says, watching Bitty’s hands as they reassemble the custom bolt action suppressed sniper rifle that Poindexter and Chow left for them at the range. Jack knows that it’s their literal job to make weapons better than the competition’s, and it’s objectively beautiful, but that’s not why he’s looking so intently.

Bittle’s hands are what got him through the door - steady like a surgeon’s, too small to look natural working a bolt.

Jack hasn’t asked Bittle how he ended up here. He never will. He tries not to think about it; none of the options are pretty, and he doesn’t know how long he can keep Bittle alive, so there’s no point in making it harder on himself than it has to be.

“Better,” he says when Bittle’s done. In the overhead light, Bittle’s pleased smile looks ghoulish. “Still not fast enough,” Jack adds, and the smile melts away.

 

*

 

“He’s not you,” Jack tells Kent, then wakes up with a start.

The next day, he’s still shaken by the memory of Kent’s disembodied voice saying, “You just haven’t broken him yet.”

 

*

 

“Fuck, Bittle, _take the damn shot,_ ” Jack says.

He’s been running after the target for two minutes too long. Soon he’ll be out of Bittle’s range, and then he’ll have to wait for Johnson to find the fucker again.

Bittle takes the shot. Bittle misses. Jack stops running and starts swearing instead, ignoring Bittle’s apology. The guy cut him with his own knife, which is frankly insulting; the left sleeve of his suit is ruined, and he’ll need stitches.

“You’re stitching me up,” he tells Bittle. “Then you’re going to explain to me exactly how you missed that shot, because it was fucking easy.”

“I’m sorry,” Bittle says again, but Jack doesn’t want to hear excuses. He hasn’t dropped a hit since he was Bittle’s age, and that was only because Kent got shot and couldn’t stop his own bleeding.

Bittle’s hands are steady as ever as he stitches Jack up at the hotel. He doesn’t explain anything. He promises to do better next time.

“If you want to be a sniper, you have to do the fucking job,” Jack grits out through clenched teeth. “Don’t make me look bad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, be better,” Jack says, then has to close his eyes against the way Bittle’s face falls. Christ.

 

*

 

“Twenty-eight,” Jack says.

“That’s more than I thought,” Bittle says. He looks like he regrets asking, but what did he expect? Jack does wetwork. He’s been doing it since he was seventeen, and most of the hits are from that first year with Kent, when they were pretending to be students and no one thought they were dangerous until it was too late.

Even then, Kent was a ghost. Jack had to put in appearances at his mother’s charity galas once in a while; Kent was being trained by George, and no one should see an interrogator until it’s time to talk. Jack’s known George since he was ten and he’s still terrified of being alone in a room with her. When she was training them, Jack had to fuck Kent through the comedown every time; fuck him or hold him or just live with his secrets. 

He learned to be scared of Kent, too, but he can’t hold on to it. He knows it's fucked up, and he understands why everyone hates Kent, but it’s not that simple. Kent will break him down every chance he gets, but he already knows all of Jack’s hiding places. He's not looking for anything. He doesn't ask about Jack's marks, not even the ones he takes before Jack gets to them.

“I’m going to take my stitches out,” he tells Bittle eventually. Bittle makes a face and doesn’t stick around to watch.

 

*

 

“Damn it,” Jack says. “Control, are you getting this?”

The second time they find the guy, they miss Kent by about ten minutes. He must’ve had hours in the basement and a lot of questions to ask, because the sight and smells that greet them when they push open the rusty door make Bittle gag.

“This is an unfortunate development,” Johnson says.

“Do we have eyes?” Jack asks, but they don’t, because Kent is too good to be caught on camera. “What was he doing here? This guy didn’t know anything, he was a middleman.”

“How do you know he didn’t know anything? He might’ve seen files, or -”

“If he had anything,” Jack interrupts Bittle, “he would’ve talked. Trust me. He wouldn’t have lasted long enough for this.”

“Parson’s a last resort, if you will,” Johnson explains.

“Who’s Parson?” Bittle asks, still pale. “How do you know it was him?”

Jack sighs. He regrets it when the smell hits him anew, though not as much as he regrets every choice that led him down those stairs to see Bittle against the gory picture that Kent painted for Jack.

“This is a message,” he says, bone-tired. “Parson is... Parson was one of ours.”

From the look on his face, Bittle doesn’t miss the way it sounds like _he was mine._ He takes another look at the walls, at the ruined thing in the middle that he failed to shoot the other week. He’s quiet while Jack calls Ransom and Holster in for cleanup.

“I’m sorry,” Bittle says on the plane that night. He’s not talking about the dropped hit.

“Why? You don’t know him.”

“No,” Bittle says, “but you did,” and there’s nothing left for Jack to do but put his earbuds in and pretend to sleep all the way to Boston.


End file.
